One Country by Australian rock band Midnight Oil is the ultimate call to reconciliation – “one country, one…”. It’s true patriotism, without the ‘ranting and raving’. This is the second song presented here by ‘the Oils‘ after their first entry Beds are Burning was posted back in 2019.
Allow me to digress...So it has taken 4 years to go from the B's to the O's in the alphabetical song order of the music library project (approximately 720 songs). Currently 610 songs still remain - not including unforeseen songs which will be added concurrently.
Now back to the Oils and One Country…. (and most of the following is sourced from the excellent first reference below – Media Loper):
After having their biggest world-wide album ever with Diesel and Dust, the Oils took a couple of years off and followed it up with 1990’s Blue Sky Mining, which was nearly as good, spawning a couple of major radio songs in “Blue Sky Mine” and “Forgotten Years”. As good as those songs were, my favourite song on the album was today’s featured track the slow-burning One Country” which I guess is the closest Midnight Oil ever got to doing a U2-style anthem such as yesterday’s song entry – One.
Who’d like to change the world?
Who wants to shoot the curl?
Who wants to work for bread?
Who wants to get ahead?
Who hands out equal rights?
Who starts and ends that fight?
And not rant and rave
Or end up a slave
Who can make hard-won gains?
Fall, like the summer rain?
Every man must be
What his life can be
So don’t, call, me
The tune I will walk away
At first, One Country is little more than Peter Garrett singing — uncharacteristically quietly — over an acoustic guitar. And slowly, ever so slowly, One Country builds and builds, until about halfway through, drummer Robert Hirst switches into a marital beat, guitarists Jim Moginie & Martin Rotsey switch to their electric guitars, and then, unexpectedly, bassist Bones Hillman sings: Onnnnnnnnnnne country (x 4)
It’s startling, hearing someone other than Peter Garrett take a solo vocal performance on a Midnight Oil track, and at first Hillman sounds tentative, like he shouldn’t really be singing by himself, but, of course Garrett isn’t going to leave him hanging, so while Hillman continues to sing, Garrett counterpoints:
Who wants to sit around, turn it up turn it down
Only a man can be, what his life can be
One vision, one people, one landmass
We are defenseless, we have a lifeline
And it is utterly thrilling and absolutely gorgeous, even as they pile on the guitars and strings towards an utterly massive finale, marching on into the distance singing “country onnnnnnnne country” until the end of time.
References:
1. Certain Songs #1138: Midnight Oil – “One Country” – Media Loper
2. Blue Sky Mining – Wikipedia
3. Midnight Oil – Wikipedia
4. One Country – Song Meanings
“The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.”- Michel Legrand
Observation Blogger 
I enjoyed this. Cool.
Sweet. Check out their ‘Beds are Burning’. They were the bees knees around this time.
Was not familiar with this Midnight Oil track, but such a grand song!
I’m delighted you thought so too Jeff. I think it’s my Oil desert Is song.